Google has just unveiled its Chrome OS operating system during a press event at the company's headquarters, and it's pretty much exactly what we expected it to be: a streamlined Linux kernel booting straight into the Chrome web browser. The code is available starting today.

What do you have that's so important anyways? No one cares about your family photos.

That along with Do you really need itunes? is going to make these things fly off the shelves.

And yes many of us do work with sensitive information, especially those of us in the proprietary software industry.

I also know quite a few people in the medical industry and they would never store their documents on Google servers for the simple reason that they don't have to. They operate on a need-to-know basis and Google doesn't need to know about a word document that details your venereal disease. It's better kept on the local intranet.

I also know someone who works for the feds and they don't even connect their computers to the internet. To get something like winzip installed requires going through a chain of command and filling out a form.

There will also be people that oppose the idea simply because they feel it is not respectful of their privacy. Google should have built a hybrid system, going web-only will make it instantly unappealing to large sections of the population.